Wheat is one of the most important crops worldwide. World demand for wheat requires that improvements continue to be made in both wheat yield and quality. While conventional wheat breeding has resulted in improved wheat yields in the past, the last decade has seen little to no improvement. This is largely due to lack of knowledge about the genetic architecture of most complex traits and our inability to select for traits in a cost effective manner as part of a conventional breeding program (Gupta et al. 2010. Mol Breeding 26:145-161).
Breeding for desirable traits in wheat has been performed largely by phenotyping in the field and/or greenhouse. However, to effectively and accurately phenotype traits, such as e.g. heading, anther-extrusion, flowering and fusarium head blight resistance, wheat lines often have to be selfed several times to obtain homozygous material. In addition, since these traits are influenced by environmental conditions, the wheat lines need to be phenotyped in several locations and across several years, thereby requiring significant time, monetary, and land resources.
The identification of genetic markers linked to a favorable phenotype (i.e. trait) of interest, such as e.g. heading, anther-extrusion, flowering and fusarium head blight resistance, permits wheat lines to be genotyped at relatively little expense and during earlier stages of development, thereby allowing for the retention of only the lines with favorable genotypic information. This process is known as marker assisted selection. Methods of marker assisted selection allow breeders to avoid several generations of selling, eliminating a large part of the phenotyping efforts, and ultimately leads to more rapid improvements in wheat at a lower cost and with significantly less field resources.
As such, there is a continual need for wheat plants with improved phenotypic traits. Thus, it is desirable to provide compositions and methods for identifying and selecting such plants.